Take the pledge to vote

Thank you for taking the pledge

Vote responsibly as each vote counts
and makes a diffrence

Disclaimer:

Issued in public interest by HDFC Life. HDFC Life Insurance Company Limited (Formerly HDFC Standard Life Insurance Company Limited) (“HDFC Life”). CIN: L65110MH2000PLC128245, IRDAI Reg. No. 101 . The name/letters "HDFC" in the name/logo of the company belongs to Housing Development Finance Corporation Limited ("HDFC Limited") and is used by HDFC Life under an agreement entered into with HDFC Limited. ARN EU/04/19/13618

At their heart, negotiations were about how each nation funds action to mitigate and adapt to climate change, as well as how those actions are reported.

Polish teenagers stage a protest in the UN climate conference venue on the last days of talks to urge negotiators from almost 200 countries to reach an agreement on ways of keeping global warming in check in Katowice, Poland on December 14, 2018. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)

Loading...

Katowice (Poland): Nations on Sunday struck a deal to breathe life into the landmark 2015 Paris climate treaty after marathon UN talks that failed to match the ambition the world's most vulnerable countries need to avert dangerous global warming.

Delegates from nearly 200 states finalised a common rulebook designed to deliver the Paris goals of limiting global temperature rises to well below two degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit).

"Putting together the Paris agreement work programme is a big responsibility," said COP24 president Michal Kurtyka as he gavelled through the deal after talks in Poland that ran deep into overtime.

"It has been a long road. We did our best to leave no one behind." But states already dealing with devastating floods, droughts and extreme weather made worse by climate change said the package agreed in the mining city of Katowice lacked the bold ambition to cut emissions the world needed.

Egyptian ambassador Wael Aboulmagd, chair of a the G77 & China negotiating bloc, said the rule book saw the "urgent adaptation needs of developing countries relegated to a second-class status."

Executive director of Greenpeace Jennifer Morgan said: "We continue to witness an irresponsible divide between the vulnerable island states and impoverished countries pitted against those who would block climate action or who are immorally failing to act fast enough."

The final decision text was repeatedly delayed as negotiators sought guidelines that could ward off the worst threats posed by our heating planet while protecting the economies of rich and poor nations alike.

"Without a clear rulebook, we won't see how countries are tracking, whether they are actually doing what they say they are doing," Canada's Environment Minister Catherine McKenna told AFP.

At their heart, negotiations were about how each nation funds action to mitigate and adapt to climate change, as well as how those actions are reported.

Developing nations wanted more clarity from richer ones over how the future climate fight will be funded and pushed for so-called "loss and damage" measures.

This would see richer countries giving money now to help deal with the effects of climate change many vulnerable states are already experiencing.

Another contentious issue was the integrity of carbon markets, looking ahead to the day when the patchwork of distinct exchanges — in China, the Europe Union, parts of the United States — may be joined up in a global system.

The Paris Agreement calls for setting up a mechanism to guard against practices, such as double counting emissions savings, that could undermine such a market. A major sticking point, delegates eventually agreed Saturday to kick the issue down the road until next year.

One veteran observer told AFP Poland's presidency at COP24 had left many countries out of the process and presented at-risk nations with a "take it or leave it" deal.

Progress had "been held up by Brazil, when it should have been held up by the small islands. It's tragic." One of the largest disappointments for countries of all wealths and sizes was the lack of ambition to reduce emissions shown in the final COP24 text.

Most nations wanted the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to form a key part of future planning.

It highlighted the need to slash carbon pollution by nearly half before 2030 in order to hit the 1.5C target. But the US, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Kuwait objected, leading to watered-down wording.

The final statement from the Polish COP24 presidency welcomed "the timely conclusion" of the report and invited "parties to make use of it" — hardly the ringing endorsement many nations had called for.

"There's been a shocking lack of response to the 1.5 report," Greenpeace's Morgan, told AFP. "You can't come together and say you can't do more!" UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who made three trips to Katowice over the course of the talks, said the world's climate fight was just beginning.

"From now on my five priorities will be: Ambition, ambition, ambition, ambition, ambition," he said in a message read out by UN climate chief Patricia Espinosa.

With the political climate process well into its third decade sputtering on as emissions rise remorselessly, activists have stepped up grassroots campaigns of civil disobedience to speed up action.

"We are not a one-off protest, we are a rebellion," a spokesman for the Extinction Rebellion movement, which disrupted at least one ministerial event at the COP, told AFP.

"We are organising for repeated disruption, and we are targeting our governments, calling for the system change needed to deal with the crisis that we are facing." (Get detailed and live results of each and every seat in the Lok Sabha elections and state Assembly elections in Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim to know which candidate/party is leading or trailing and to know who has won and who has lost and by what margin. Our one-of-its-kind Election Analytics Centre lets you don a psephologist’s hat and turn into an election expert. Know interesting facts and trivia about the elections and see our informative graphics. Elections = News18)